Last Words: Eazy-E's It's on (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa

In late 1993, Eazy-E was deep into a vicious musical and personal battle with Dr. Dre—and he was losing. But the incendiary It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa—Eazy's last album before his death—had the gansta-rap originator fighting back hard.

The mid-90s saw the release of an incredible number of important hip-hop albums—Rolling on Dubs revisits one of these records each month, around their 20th anniversary, and retraces the past through a contemporary vantage point.

It’s impossible to explain to your mom why you’re listening to a song called “Gimmie That Nutt”. Even the spelling is obscene: two T’s for extra titillation, menacingly trilled in Eazy-E’s rabid woodpecker chirp. Cassettes of *It’s on (*Dr. Dre)187um Killa should’ve come packaged with Locs and a brown paper bag.

It probably makes more sense when rolling down Crenshaw in a 6-4 Impala with alpine speakers, lambskin condoms, and assault weapons. But at the gruelingly virginal age of 12, in the fall of 1993, there was only the gnawing terror of my parents giving me “the talk.” The apartment was small. The eight-by-eight den that doubled as my bedroom had a shutter door with no lock. No headphones. I was permanently one decibel away from forced conscription into a discussion about Eazy-E’s Sex Ed: “In some pussy is the place to be/ Always fucking is the life for me.”

What’s worse was that the ex-N.W.A. incubus cackled, "spread them legs open far and wide, fuck this shit just let me put my dick inside” to the melody of the "Green Acres" theme song. It was the Penthouse to 2 Live Crew’s Playboy (“Pop That Pussy”), a siren deceiving my parents to mistake their sullen adolescent’s gangsta rap obsession for a Nick at Nite rural sitcom set in the hamlet of Hooterville.

But Eva Gabor couldn’t touch Eric Wright. Eazy-Motherfucking-E was only competing with Dr. Dre, and by late '93, he was losing. You can’t overstate the impact of The Chronic, released the previous December. Its hybrid strain of G-Funk blended an elevated musicality with a hundred years of sawed-off rage. It had Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound, and enough raunch for Richard Pryor biters at the barbershop. It incited a before-and-after rupture usually only seen with civil wars, disruptive technologies, or sandaled messiahs.

This was directly after the L.A. riots left blocks of South Central and Compton in rubble and cinders. Dre and Suge Knight’s Death Row applied this same loot-and-burn approach towards their rival’s once-dominant Ruthless Records. For most of '93, MTV operated as a de facto anti-Eazy-E propaganda network. The extended video for The Chronic’s second single, “Fuck Wit Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’)” ran almost hourly. It featured an interlude where Dre vaporized the greasy “Sleazy-E” with a semi-automatic that looked like a light saber. The conclusion found the jigging, jheri-curled caricature panhandling beside the Pasadena Freeway with a “Will Rap for Food” sign.

“Eazy wasn’t just upset, he was hurt,” remembers Kokane, the vocalist who had belted funk angel of death hooks for Ruthless since signing with them in 1991 and appears twice on *It’s On (*Dr. Dre)187um Killa. “It was Eazy’s vision for N.W.A.—he recruited Dre and Cube and helped make them stars, then they made up fake stories about him and abandoned him.”

It’s weird to think of Eazy-E as sensitive, let alone sad or vulnerable. We instinctively think of him as Darth Vader in immolating black—the helmet swapped out for a “Compton” hat with Old English script—letting every West Coast gangsta rapper know that he is their father.

Eazy-E mastered the villain role a decade before DOOM first donned his mask. Before 50 Cent perfected the art of the anti-hero, there was the grim nihilism of Eazy-E, who turned a warning letter from the FBI into multi-platinum sales. No radio play. If Tyler, the Creator is the archetypal contemporary rap troll, he’s following Eazy. One time, he bought a $2,500 ticket for a “Salute the Commander in Chief” White House luncheon with George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, and proceeded to show up ruthlessly stoned in a black leather suit. When questioned about it, he told reporters, ”I just got a kick out of the fact that I could stab the motherfucker with a pen."

The period before *It’s On (*Dr. Dre)187um Killa marked Eazy’s lowest ebb since 1987, when he parlayed a quarter million dollars of dope money into Ruthless Records. It was also the year that he bailed Dr. Dre, parking ticket scofflaw, out of jail. In exchange, Andre Young assumed in-house production at the fledgling label. Two years later, Straight Outta Compton bushwhacked America. Ruthless wrote the blueprint for a black-owned independent rap label—one later adopted by Death Row, No Limit, and Cash Money. But after Dre and Cube finally ditched Eazy, all he had left was attitude (and points on Dre’s future royalties).

Rather than limp on with MC Ren and DJ Yella, Eazy rekindled his solo career, which had been on sabbatical since 1988’s Eazy-Duz-It. Released five days before The Chronic, the 5150: Home for Tha Sick EP featured ghostwriting from Treach of Naughty By Nature, and a teenaged will.i.am rapping on the holiday jingle “Merry Muthaphukkin’ Xmas”. The Chronic became the gangsta rap Thriller. Ice Cube’s The Predator went double platinum. But Eazy’s record lived up to its infirm title, stalling at #70 on the charts. Six months of scorn followed.

It’s OnDr. Dre(187um Killa) was the cluster bomb exacting brutal revenge. It is Eazy-E as De Niro in Cape Fear, Victor Frankenstein trying to destroy the monster, Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female. If N.W.A. was the original Grand Theft Auto, this was San Andreas—the ante of evil was one-upped. It’s almost sociopathic in its deranged menace and cold-blooded assassination. Eazy brands himself “the Devil’s son-in-law.” He does everything but poison Dre’s drugs with Polonium. It’s exactly the sort of thing that you don’t want your 12-year-old listening to, which is exactly why I loved it.

Maybe this seems like crass Richie Incognito hazing in 2013, but it triggered my first revelation that rap wasn’t always reality. When Jay-Z embarrassed Prodigy at Summer Jam with childhood dance recital pictures, the technique came from Eazy-E’s art of war. The scorched-earth tactics of 2Pac and Lil Boosie appropriated Eazy’s carnivorous ferocity.

Eazy anchored his album to the single “Real Muthaphukkin’ G’s”, one of the most savage songs ever recorded—if you slunk to the gates of Hell, you imagine this is what the Cerberus would be bumping, snarling and throwing up his set. Nothing was sacred: back-story, sexuality, inability to gain weight. Groupies flirted back and forth between Death Row and Ruthless, leaking pillow-talk secrets and observations. So Eazy pillories Dre for submitting to Suge Knight’s reign of terror. He taunts him for still being under contract to Ruthless: “'Dre Day’ only meant Eazy’s payday."

Two brothers from Compton’s Nutty Blocc Crips supplied the song's muscle: B.G. Knocc Out and Gangsta Dresta. They feature prominently in the video, depicting a Compton where you can make one wrong turn and run into a man swinging an aluminum Louisville Slugger. Low riders lurch. Pit bulls glare. There is ur-twerking, and shots of Eazy E air-punching in batting gloves. “Sleazy-E,” the caricature from the “Dre Day” video, gets chased by ostensibly every Crip in Compton—arguably the most “meta” moment in '93 hip-hop, aside from De La Soul.

“Dresta wrote the concept, hook, and Eazy’s verses," B.G. Knocc Out tells me last month over Skype. "I wasn’t even originally supposed to be on it.” It’s 4 a.m. Saudi Arabia time, and he’s calling amidst a month-long Hajj pilgrimage.

During a prison stint for attempted murder during the late 90s, B.G. renounced gang life, converted to Islam, and changed his name from Arlandis Hinton to Al Hassan Naqiyy. We speak for over an hour about his changed life, the mysterious circumstances of Eazy’s death, and his brother, who remains incarcerated due to a probation violation. He also breaks down what happened at the 1994 Billboard Awards, which almost turned into a Ruthless Crips vs. Death Row Bloods shootout adjacent to Universal Studios. (Prominent Crip Michael Concepcion helped broker a temporary peace).

“We met Eazy through someone from the Jordan Downs projects,” B.G. continued. “One day he asked us to rap, liked it, and told us that he’d take us to Ruthless. But when he returned, only my brother was there. Eventually, Eazy gave me a shot and I spit out every rhyme I had for an hour straight. They said, ‘Try something else.’ I asked for some weed and what wound up on wax was almost exactly what came out at that moment.”

The production slapped like a sinister mutation of G-Funk. The Source mocked Eazy for mimicking Dre’s “patented” sound, infamously calling him “Colonel Sanders without the special herbs and spices.” But the innovation originally came from Ruthless Records research and design. “Any Last Werdz” featured apocalyptic swing from Kokane and Hutch of Above the Law, whose role in G-Funk’s genesis tends to get overshadowed.

“Dre was great at putting things together, but N.W.A. was a group effort. Eazy helped produce. So did Hutch, Yella, and LA Jay,” Kokane says. “G-Funk was originally a style of music that Above the Law created. I’m not dissing nobody, just speaking facts. Dre took G-Funk and made it his own, but he took all the credit. It was a copy of our sound. He’s a genius, but you can’t erase the history of those who helped you.”

The beat for “Real Muthaphukkin G’s” came from Rhythum D, who had recently jumped from Death Row to Ruthless in search of a bigger production role. Eazy-E instantly rewarded his new loyalties by pulling 10 racks out of his sock. If critics dismissed the record as derivative, the claims are void 20 years later. Pull out a West Coast Rap record from '92-'96 and you’ll inevitably hear the serpentine G-Funk whine and hard hydraulic drums. It’s what it’s supposed to sound like, except tougher.

“I was trying to make hard-knocking hip-hop beats, but ones with bass lines that seemed like they were clowning Dr. Dre,” Rhythum D says from Atlanta, where he relocated two years ago. “I wanted it to be a sinister parody of Dre’s sound.”

*It’s On (*Dr. Dre)187um Killa separated itself through urgency and absence of restraint. It was bloodsport to protect reputations, careers, and legacy. Eazy-E coming soft was as unthinkable as centering The Godfather around Fredo. Even the all-night session that yielded the “Real Muthaphukkin G’s” beat came in immediate response to “Dre Day”.

“Our go-to-place was Larry Parker’s in Beverly Hills, a 24-hour diner where all the rappers and stars went,” Rhythum D continues. “Late one night, ‘Dre Day’ comes on their big screen for the first time, and it’s banging. Eazy-E had just put out a C-List record that wasn’t up to par, and everyone knew that I was down with Ruthless. So the whole room just looked at me like, ‘Damn nigga, what you gonna do?'”

The South Central-raised producer immediately left Larry Parker’s for the studio, where he made the beat between 3:30 and 7:30 a.m. Decades before chopped and screwed became cliché, Rhythum D slowed and pitched-down the intro vocals to amplify the evil. The scraping sound comes courtesy of an old-fashioned metal washboard. This is another reason why it’s one of the greatest diss songs in rap history: It sounds like it’s spitting in your eye.

*It’s On (*Dr. Dre)187um Killa became Eazy’s best-selling solo project, double platinum, atop the Billboard Hip-Hop/R&B charts. It’s also the last thing released before he passed away in 1995, due to A.I.D.S-related complications. One of his final acts included a campaign to raise HIV awareness in hip-hop. A penitent Dr. Dre was one of the last visitors to Eazy’s hospital bed. Following his death, a wealth of information emerged about philanthropic deeds that went unpublicized during his lifetime. They probably would’ve been bad for business.

It’s slightly sad listening to “Gimmie That Nutt” today. The same comic hedonism that makes it great sent him to an early grave. But it also gives the song an extra dimension. Even at his most absurd, there was something real about Eazy-E, or at least raw. It didn’t matter whether he actually wrote his songs; he was his songs.

I don’t know whether to attribute it to freak luck, favorable acoustics, or faulty hearing, but my mom never caught me listening to “Gimmie That Nutt”—I was spared from trite “birds and bees” metaphors and having to explain the identity of “Heidi Ho”. After all, Eazy had already taught those lessons. His influence rings eternal in every kid forced into clandestine listening. And I still hope my mom doesn’t read this.